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Abstract

Entrepreneurship education (EPE) plays a vital role to enhance employment creation and reduce poverty. Marketing audit is a main tool for evaluating and improving the marketing performance in a manufacturing or service sector. Despite the vast amount of literature which emphasizes entrepreneurship education, no empirical studies address the marketing audit model for EPE in the higher education sector. This study aims to develop a standardized marketing audit model for the EPE at higher education generally, business schools specially. A total of 200 participants were chosen by a purposive judgmental sampling technique from the only two universities which took steps towards establishing EPE in Egypt. A descriptive survey method using a questionnaire, focus group, semi-structured interviews and workshops were employed to develop a standardized model. The results showed the importance of the six dimensions in a standardized marketing audit model for EPE at business schools in Egypt.

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1. Introduction

In today’s knowledge-intensive economy, the service sector and service innovation for business and society represent the fastest growing portion of the world economy (Al-Badarneh, Spohrer, & Al-Duwairi, 2013). The service economy refers to the service sector, which has become the most important economic sector, surpassing traditional sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing (Dinh & Thi, 2012). Consequently, effectiveness of services, service processes and service production has become vital in modern economies (Tinnilä, 2013). Services generally, and services offered by education specially, are intangible, heterogeneous, inseparable, and perishable; therefore, “Education” being a very unique service in every form has been of interest to many researchers (Agrawal& Sharma, 2014).

Entrepreneurship Education (EPE) is a major educational service to address the problem of university students’ employment, economic growth, innovation, economic flexibility, aiding culture formation, population integration, and social mobility (Hisrich, Langan-Fox & Grant, 2007). The importance of this education comes from three major themes: a solid demand for more entrepreneurship programs in the schools; Educational access to the “Make-a-Job” option; and Economic growth (Kourilsky, 1995). Generally, the main objectives of the entrepreneurship education are: (1) to promote better understanding of entrepreneurship, (2) to enhance entrepreneurial skills, and (3) to create more entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship Education may take the form of an academic program, entrepreneurship training, and individual or peer coaching (Katz, 2007). Entrepreneurship Education Programmes prepare students to be entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial thinkers and contributes to economic development and sustainable communities. It focuses on innovation and enterprise as well as the drive towards “Teach Less and Learn More” initiative. Specifically, the objectives of entrepreneurship education programmes are (1) to nurture and strengthen the values and culture of entrepreneurship among students, (2) to provide exposure and knowledge about business management, (3) to provide insights into business potential and entrepreneurial opportunities, and (4) to encourage students to pursue entrepreneurship after graduation (Mohamed, 2011).

EPE has emerged strongly in United States, Europe and China. In the United States alone, there has been a substantial increase in the number of courses offered in the past 20 years - over 2,000 courses 1,500 schools, and 100 funded centres (Kuratko, 2003); German government recently funded 25 chairs in entrepreneurship, and in China courses are taught in many higher education institutions (Hisrich, 2005).

Egypt took steps towards establishing entrepreneurship education; it is already cooperating with the OECD and the European Union in promoting SME's development and related entrepreneurship education (European Commission, OECD & ETF, 2008). The results of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) for Egypt (2008) have identified education and training as one of the main constraining factors to entrepreneurship development (Hattab, 2008). An important OECD report (2008) also calls for attention for appropriate action on entrepreneurship education, not only in Egypt but also in other Mediterranean (MED) countries (OECD-EU & ETF, 2008: p.17). UNESCO program was developed to support the creation of a number of science and technology parks and link researches at Egyptian universities to the industrial sector with the aim of establishing small and medium enterprises (SME's) (UNESCO report on Science and Technology Parks in Egypt, 2007: p.7). Some Egyptian Ministries and several other main actors issue the necessary “regulations” to promote, support and provide financing to entrepreneurs (Abou-Warda, 2014a). Also, most educational policies have been developed towards supporting entrepreneurship (Abou-Warda, 2014 b). These efforts encouraged some universities in Egypt to establishing entrepreneurship education as a formalized structured programme.